Alabama Board of Education Member Wants Truce on Common Core to Preserve Status Quo

Alabama Board of Education member Mary Scott Hunter wants a truce among board members in the fight over the Common Core State Standards, Challen Stephens reports:

Mary Scott Hunter says it’s time for the members of the Alabama state school board to call a truce and stop fighting over Common Core.

"Both sides of this debate can claim victories," said Hunter in a recent interview with AL.com.

"My opinion, we need to declare a truce on this and move on to other important things."

But the answer from fellow GOP officials is clear. The battle will continue.

"We haven’t done anything significant," said board member Betty Peters this week. "We changed the name (from Common Core), but we haven’t changed any significant content."

Hunter, the Republican board member for northeast Alabama, said the state board has taken steps to distance itself from the creators of Common Core.

Hunter pointed out the state school board in November rescinded the memorandum of agreement with the authors of the national standards. Last month the state board voted to remove any link to the list of national exemplars, the so-called "de facto national reading list" opposed by critics.

But opponents of Common Core voted against the efforts to cut ties.

"It’s misleading," said Peters, who represents Dothan and southeast Alabama.

She compared the recent board votes to renegotiating the terms of an engagement after you’ve already been married.

Alabama College and Career Readiness Standards contain 100 percent of the national Common Core standards. And Peters said many of the standards are grade inappropriate.

Peters said removing a link to the list containing suggested reading materials doesn’t forbid the use of those books. So she voted against it last month. "I do not want to confuse the public."

Read the rest. Peters is right. The recent board votes do nothing to change the content. The problems that exist with the content of the Common Core, still exists with Alabama’s College and Career Readiness Standards. Nothing has changed, so it is not surprising that Hunter wants a truce.

States Fighting Back

CCSS Opt-Out Form

Follow us on Twitter

Campbell’s Law

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."